A very veggie kind of week

Sometimes you just want, nay - need,  a lot of veg. This is such a week for me, much to the Ladybug's disgust. (She counts on choice tidbits whenever possible). Such is my desire for veg that today I even ordered chicken prahram without the chicken. 

Inspired by the latest issue of Delicious, I thought I'd try something new - schiacciatta as the Italians call it. Broccoli pie for the rest of us. Now you may find yourself asking: 'Why? Why, oh why would anyone put broccoli in a pie?' It's a good question and I can only imagine that at the time it was invented, the inventor was met with as much enthusiasm as I was when I suggested a sort of breakfast pie. (I still don't think it sounds that bad.)

I have to admit if someone sprung this on me as a concept, without visuals, I'd be dubious. Having seen it in the magazine, I was more hopeful. It looked good, and turns out that it is. The flavours are simple and clean, it's easy to make and it works well cold for lunch the next day. In one shot, the pastry has become my favourite pastry recipe ever. I used the leftover to make a killer calzone. Even my favourite carnivore gave it two thumbs up. So from page 127-128 of this month's Delicious, I give you schiacciatta.

Ingredients:

3 heads broccoli, trimmed & thinly sliced

6 spring onions, thinly sliced

100g parmesan cheese

1/2 cup (125ml) olive oil, plus 3 tbsp extra

6 anchovy fillets (optional) - but I really recommend this. It adds that little something.

1/2 tsp chilli flakes (optional) - again, just do it!!!

Dough

30g fresh yeast or 2 x 7g sachets dried

2tsp sugar

700g plain flour

100ml plain flour (naturally I used spelt flour)

100ml olive oil

For dough, crumple fresh yeast into 3/4 cup (185ml) water and add sugar. Stir until yeast dissolves. (If using dried, mix water with sugar then sprinkle with yeast) Leave it in a warm place for 10-15 minutes until frothy.

Sift flour and 2-3 tsp salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. Pour in yeast mixture, add oil and 3/4 cup (185ml) lukewarm water. Mix well with your hands. If it's too dry, add a little more water or if too wet, more flour.

Knead dough in bowl until soft and elastic - sprinkle with a little flour if too sticky. Roll dough into a ball. Cover with a damp tea towel. Stand in a warm lace for 1 1/2 hours to double in size.

Preheat oven to 190º C. Put broccoli, onion, parmesan, oil, anchovies and chilli and some salt and pepper in a large bowl. Mix well with your hands.

Halve the dough and roll out one piece to the same size as a baking dish about 30cm x 35cm. Brush some extra oil over the dish, then line with dough, using your fingers to stretch it out to cover the base. Spread the broccoli on the dough, leaving a border. 

Roll out the second piece of dough and place on top of the broccoli. Seal edges well by pinching dough - the steam trapped inside will cook the broccoli. Brush top with oil. Bake 1 - 1 1/4 hours until light golden. Rest for at least 30 minutes, then serve warm or cold. 

Just a couple of things: If you really wanted to avoid making the pastry from scratch, you could try puff. But this is just so easy and so delicious that you should give it a go. Second, I brushed the edges with water & stuck the lid on by pressing the edges with a fork and cutting away the excess. No pinching for me. 

Filled mocha cake

One night last week, something caught my eye on my bookshelf. It was a compilation of recipes clipped mostly from magazines and newspapers, held together in a cut-down manila folder and tied with a piece of string. I found it years ago in my mother's garage, apparently inherited from a late relative. 

I'd never used anything in it before, but could never bear to throw it away. I guess I see it as a sort of time capsule representing the efforts of some distant person, long gone, in their personal culinary journey. I can imagine them sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and scotch-finger biscuit, kids at school, cleaning done. Finally time for leafing through the latest woman's magazine, a real treat, and scissors nearby in case they found anything interesting or that was bound to come in handy.  Presumably, only the most worthy clippings made it into the folder. 

When I think about it, it's not so different from the scrap books of recipes that I keep. And there's the link. But that's where it stops. 

The recipes are fairly ordinary stuff, befitting their era.  There are recipes for salmon mornay quiche,  noodle and sausage casserole and Montana Mom's Dynamite Cheesecake, amongst other horrors that were no doubt considered very sophisticated throughout the 70's and early 80's. 

There are even some handy hints stashed amongst the recipes. For example, Mrs Gladys.S. of Merrylands writes "if you crochet face washers and hand towels around the outside, not only will they look pretty, but they will last twice as long." Or Mrs W of Kranton's pearl of wisdom:"save the plastic egg-shaped containers that pavlova mix comes in. They make excellent gift containers for birthdays or Christmas." Hmm.....

The compiler of this collection must have sent away for a few promotional pamphlets too, like one from the Bingo Custard Powder company or Bourneville Cocoa. It was something on the cocoa pamphlet that grabbed me - a recipe for spiced cheese cake that you're meant to either use a fancy ring tin for or a slab cake tin and cut into diamond shapes. (!)

I decided the filling sounded good, so I'd do something around that. I came up with a mocha-ish cake,  based on the Bourneville cake recipe. I used a sour cream mocha icing and praline coated  walnuts to top it off. I've always thought that coffee and walnuts go together really well. I know the extra sugar in the praline probably isn't necessary, but it's so very good, I recommend going that further step. As usual, I see no problem with swapping the spelt for regular flour. 

I really like this one for a change. It's been ages since I haven't used proper chocolate in the cake, so it's not as sweet as the last few cakes I've made.  The walnuts make up for it and the slightly burnt sugar taste works beautifully. The sugar isn't actually burnt, it just has that deep flavour to it. The cheese filling in the middle is an excellent contrast - light, very slightly tart, and spiced with cinnamon. Tim is certainly happy with the result. He has asked me outright to hide it, lest it disappears overnight. Not a bad endorsement.

Ingredients:

Cake:

125g butter, room temp

3/4 cup soft brown sugar

3 eggs

1 cup spelt, sifted with 2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp cocoa

2 tbsp coffee powder

Filling:

250g soft cream cheese (I used Philly 60% less fat)

2 tbsp caster sugar

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp cinnamon

Walnuts:

1/2 cup walnut pieces

1/2 cup caster sugar

Cake: Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg, one at a time, mixing in between.  Then add the remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. 

Filling: Blend all the ingredients until smooth.

In a round spring-form cake tin, spoon in half the cake mix and spread over the bottom of the tin. Spread the cheese mixture on top. It doesn't have to be totally even, but be a bit gentle because it's probably best that it doesn't hit the bottom of the tin. The spread the remaining cake on top. Bake for about 1 hour at 180ºC. When it's done, let it cool completely on a wire wrack. 

Walnuts: heat the sugar in a pan, stirring until it becomes liquid. Take it off the heat immediately and working very quickly, mix in the walnuts and then pour or spoon the mixture onto a lined baking tray. Let it cool and harden and then chop into rough bits. Be really, really careful when working with molten sugar. It's the worst kind of burn. I got the tiniest drop in my finger and it hurt. A lot. 

Frosting:  I admit I didn't take down the icing ingredient quantities at the time, but here's what I did: I based it on a very basic butter cream icing recipe, but instead of any water or milk, I used sour cream. I threw probably about 2 cups of pure icing sugar in the mixer and mixed it dry to get rid of the lumps. (I was feeling lazy.) I then threw in about a tablespoon of butter and then about two tablespoons of lite sour cream. Add more icing sugar if it's too runny, or more sour cream if it's not. You'll figure it out. Once you get the consistency right, add a couple of tablespoons of cocoa and one of powdered instant coffee.

Ice the cake and sprinkle the walnuts on top liberally. 

Easiest chocolate brownies ever

The chocolate gingerbread turned out so well that it got me talking to colleagues about it. A promise was soon extracted from me to supply something along the same lines for Monday morning tea as well as a recipe for chocolate cheese cake. The recipe was duly copied and stuffed in my diary, and then I recalled promise number two and set to work.

Polly, a super talented and creative friend of ours, emailed me her recipe for chocolate brownies, assuring me it was delicious and no-fail. Well she was right. It did not fail. It turned out great. What failed was me. 

I must have had some kind of brain explosion during the making of these brownies. First I found I didn't have enough walnuts. Not fatal. I toasted some almonds to make up the difference. Then I was slightly short on chocolate. OK again since Polly and others had given me, sorry, us, a 1kg bag of Lindt as a wedding gift. I didn't want to open it just yet since I know it could lead to surreptitious depletion by Tim while I'm away this week, but I had to take the risk. Next, the batteries in my scales died. I removed batteries from something else and used them. I then managed to fling half the flour onto the floor because I  very un-cleverly added it to the mix while the whole thing was whizzing on high speed. Finally, I managed to get the gooey mixture all over me, several pieces of equipment, fresh fruit, the clock and the dog. [To explain about the dog, normally I leave her outside while cooking because she tends to get under-foot, hoping for a tidbit. On this occasion, I let her in to lick up the flour off the floor - I couldn't find the mop and Tim was out. Anyway, she was still hanging around when things went further awry. When Tim got home I bribed him with a brownie to bath her. Neither party were amused.]

The point is, despite my uncharacteristic clumsiness and lack of attention to detail (like chucking things in the mixer in my own order), this recipe worked really well. I didn't ice it as I found it suitably sweet, but if this isn't enough sugar for you, knock yourself out. Thanks Polly -  this one's a winner!

Ingredients:

200g dark chocolate

175g butter

2 eggs

230g soft brown sugar

125g plain flour (I used spelt - I was NOT going to be denied brownies!)

40g good quality cocoa

100g walnuts

100g extra chocolate if you want it especially rich

Melt the butter and chocolate in the pan and then leave to cool slightly. Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and thick. Fold in the cooled chocolate mixture. Mix in the sifted flour and cocoa and then fold through the nuts and optional extra chocolate. 

Pour the mixture into a pan or tin (I used a lamington tin) and bake for 20 - 30 minutes at 180º C. Test at 20 minutes. 

If you want to ice it, Polly's recommended icing mix consists of 200g dark chocolate, (melted and cooled), 125g sour cream and 30g icing sugar. Mix the whole lot together, spread on the brownies in the tin and refrigerate overnight.

Chocolate Gingerbread

My first week back after four weeks off work was salvaged only by the discovery of the last piece of chocolate gingerbread in the fridge. I ate it by myself on the back step while reflecting quietly on the previous month, shivering a little from the Autumn chill in the air and ignoring the searching gaze of Ladybug. Of course, this happened on Tuesday night and the week rapidly descended into a the daily grind that I hadn't missed at all in the preceding weeks.

Although I was greeted with very genuine exclamations of 'thank God you're back' on my return to work, I wasn't convinced that I was ready to get back to the salt mines. Sigh... I really could have gotten used to a life with no sleep deprivation, reading for fun and cooking with chocolate more than once a week. Or perhaps not. (I weighed myself this morning for the first time since before the wedding when I couldn't stop losing weight if I'd tried (which I did try after the final dress fitting) and thought 'oops!')

Anyhow, along the way I made the most delicious cake/brownie I have made in a very long time. It's adapted from the wonderful Nigella's Feast (p278) and I served it as dessert at Good Friday lunch. It's now a firm favourite. I've made gingerbread, ginger cake, chocolate brownies, biscuits and cakes, but have not put the two together in a baked good. For whatever reason, chocolate and ginger baked together really, really works. 

I adapted this to my own special needs by using spelt, brown sugar and upping the ginger content slightly and I can swear by this as an easy and delectable bake that should impress anyone with functioning taste buds.

Ingredients:

175 g unsalted butter

125g dark muscovado sugar (or brown sugar)

2 tbsp caster sugar

200g golden syrup

200g treacle or molasses (I used treacle)

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger (I used 4 tsp)

1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tbsp warm water

2 eggs

250ml milk

275g plain flour (I used spelt flour)

40g cocoa

175 g chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 170ºC and line a roasting tin or dish of approximately 30cm x 20 cm x 5cm deep.

In a decent sized saucepan (and make sure it is b/c I started off with something way too small and had to switch), melt the butter along with the sugars, golden syrup, treacle or molasses, loves, cinnamon and round ginger. In a cup dissolve the bicarb or soda in the water. Take the saucepan off the heat and beat in the eggs, milk and bicarb and water mix. It will froth up a bit at this point, hence no small pan! 

Stir in the flour and cocoa and beat with a wooden spoon to mix. Fold in the chocolate chips, pour into the lined tin and bake for about 45mins until risen and firm. It will be slightly damp underneath the set top and that's the way you want it.

Put the whole thing on a wire rack and let it cool. 

For the icing:

250g icing sugar, sifted

30g unsalted butter

1 tbsp cocoa

60ml ginger ale

In a heavy based saucepan, heat the butter, cocoa and ginger ale. Once the butter's melted, whisk in the icing sugar. Lift the chocolate gingerbread out of the tin and unwrap the paper. Pour over the icing just to cover the top and cut into generous chunks. I served with a dollop of double cream but there's no need for extras.

This is really nice fresh and soft out of the oven, but will keep for several days in the fridge. When it's cold, it has a texture more like a heavier brownie. 

Chocolate and Zucchini Muffins

My recent lack of posting has absolutely nothing to do with lack of interest, and everything to do with lack of time. The problem is I need more than 24 hours in a day. Especially with the job I'm doing and trying to organise our wedding in such a short time. It's that hard to book in the big things, but as a friend recently said, the devil's in the detail. We're now at the pointy end of things and have to make decisions about readings and seating arrangements and music and oh yes, vows. Tim's determined that we'll write our own. Great in theory, difficult in practice. 

I've also made what I think is a very sensible decision and will no longer be icing the top tier of the wedding cake as originally planned. I continue to douse it weekly with brandy, but I've found someone to do it who has years of experience. I had an epiphany about a week ago and realised how scary it is that I've never used white icing before, and while I'm totally confident that I will one day be able to master it, I don't think the weeks before one's wedding is the right time to start trying! So in about a week I'll drop off one very heavy, very moist fruit cake, and pick up something that looks like an elegant wedding cake. I've bought a very cool cake topper, so stay tuned for the photos!

But back to the muffins. It's the season for zucchini and my brother Sam's garden is exploding! Time to help him out and since I love zucchini with it's tender sweetness, it wasn't a big ask. Combine it with chocolate and something beautiful happens. The pecans tie it all together. It may sound weird but this combination really works, although it is more of a grown up muffin with the olive oil flavour coming through. Also, I think they're better cold so resist the temptation to heat them up. They really are a lunch box treat you can feel good about.

Ingredients:

200g grated zucchini

150g dark chocolate, chopped

100g pecans halves - chopped except for 12

2 cups spelt flour

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 medium free-range eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Super simple: place the flour in a bowl and stir through the zucchini, chocolate, pecans and sugar. Add the remaining ingredients and combine very well with a wooden spoon.

Spoon the mixture evenly into a 12 hole muffin tin, press a pecan halve gently onto each one. Bake at 180ºC (fan forced) for about 20 minutes. You can do the skewer trick to check but 20  minutes is usually right.

Makes 12 large muffins or about 16 medium ones. 

Super-moist banana & spelt cake

Another busy weekend, another Monday rolls around.

I actually did a bit of cooking on the weekend - pancakes for breakfast, roast beef on Saturday night, and the top tier of the wedding cake. The whole house smelled gorgeous for about 24 hours and I'm pretty happy with the result. Now for about 8 weeks of drizzling it with brandy and I'll be ready to try my hand at old fashioned white icing for the first time in my life. If I think about it too much, I'll realise how insane that sounds and get discouraged. So I'll move on quickly...

Yesterday I made two banana cakes.  In this heat, everything ripens so quickly and I hate wasting food so the bananas had to go. Banana cakes are not nearly as glamorous as old fashioned rich fruit cake destined for the all-important top tier, but  they're really nice in the lunchbox and I was grateful for the sugar hit today at about 3pm. It's so moist that butter was not necessary.

This recipe makes two cakes. I had a loaf pan and a standard sized round tin on hand so that's what I used. Both work, but the loaf is probably more traditional and manageable. If you don't like or have spelt, just use regular plain flour. Or use self-raising flour, and leave out the baking powder.

Ingredients

4 medium sized, ripe bananas

4 cups spelt flour

4 eggs

250g butter, softened but not melted

2 1/2 firmly packed cups brown sugar

3/4 cup milk

2 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tbsp vanilla

1 tbsp baking powder

I usually make cakes the old fashioned way that my mother taught me. That is, cream the butter and sugar first. Then in go the eggs, one by one. Followed by the baking powder, cinnamon & vanilla and half the flour. Add half the milk and once it's all mixing together well, thrown in the rest of the flour and milk. Add a little more milk if you feel the mix is too stiff. It should have some body to it, but not too much. Oh, and I use an electric mixer, but once all the ingredients are in, you don't need to beat it to death. Just combine everything really well and get some air in there.

Bake for about 45 mins to one hour at 180ºC (or 160ºC fan forced). Depending on your oven and whether you cook both at once you might need a little more or less time. Keep an eye on it and when you think it's cooked, test with a skewer - if it comes out clean, you're done. 

Thinking about tarts...

At this time of year, a lot of people have been thinking about fruit mince tarts for a while already. I know Tim has. Probably more than a few have had a mince mix on the go for weeks. My mum's best friend used to have it made about three months in advance, stored in a giant jar in the pantry that she turned over every few days. I didn't get it then. I do now.

I have to say that I didn't get quite that organised, particularly because the old fruit mince tart has never been my favourite Christmas treat. I think it has something to do with the stodgy, heavy, this doesn't bear any resemblance to fruit (or pastry for that matter), lame excuse for a tart that you can get cheaply at most supermarkets and that was thrust upon me as a child. Am I being harsh? Yes. But fair. If you can manage it, you are so much better off making your own. 

Determined not to buy any, but faced with people asking me for a recipe and Tim pining for a nice spot of tart, I decided to come up with my own recipe. I'm happy with it. The fruit mix will make oodles and last ages. I made 18 tarts to start with, but there's enough fruit left over for several dozen more. Unless Tim doesn't stop eating the stuff, in which case we'll either go without or I'll have to start from scratch. Oh yes - apparently it's great on porridge too.  

What I like about this mix is that it's not so sickly sweet and the different fruits are discernable. It's not just one dark, sludgy mass, encased in heavily shortened, much too sweet pastry. Some people may like to put in some more grog, or perhaps some jam, but I like this consistency. The orange juice and fresh apple really lighten the flavour up.  Even if some of the fruits may sound a bit odd in this mix, give it a go because there's a pretty good chance you'll wind up enjoying it a lot more than you thought you would. Just make sure you cut all the ingredients around the same size to avoid massive chunks of one thing against the smaller currants and craisins.

Use any pastry mix that you're comfortable with, but I'll put down my spelt flour recipe. As usual, you can swap the spelt for wheat flour if you like. It's all good.

For the mince:

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup chopped dried apple

1 cup currants

1 cup sultanas

1 cup chopped dried fig

1/3 cup mixed peel

1/3 cup chopped apricot

1/3 cup chopped glace cherries

1/4 cup chopped crystalised ginger

1 tbsp mixed spice

1/2 tbsp ground cloves

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/2 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)

juice of two oranges

2 small peeled and grated apples

1 cup sherry

Stick this all in a large bowl, stir, cover and refrigerate for as long as it takes to use it. You can stir it every so often if you've got if for a few weeks.

Spelt pastry:

1 2/3 cup plain spelt flour

1/3 cup caster sugar

150g chopped butter, room temp

1 egg yolk

1 tsp ground cinnamon

I used my mixer, starting with the butter and flour until crumbly and then adding the rest. If you're finding it too dry, put in a few drops of water or milk. You could also make this by hand, or whack the lot in a food processor. Knead it lightly on a floured surface but don't overwork it. Wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.

Roll cooled dough out on a floured surface and then cut rounds to the size of your muffin or tart tins. Don't worry if the rounds look to small and don't reach to the top - they're not meant to be the size of muffins! Grease the tins and press the pastry inside, pricking each one with a fork. Refrigerate for half an hour, then cook for 5 minutes in a hot oven - 200ºC/180ºC fan forced. 

Let the tart shells cool a little bit, then fill each one with fruit and press it in a bit. You can either cut more rounds for the tops, or cut shapes out of the leftover pastry or rolled marzipan. The marzipan tastes brilliant cooked. Brush the lot with lightly beaten egg yolk - doesn't matter if a bit gets into the fruit.

Bake for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.